in cannes | davinci bored

in cannes | davinci bored

Forty minutes into Ron Howard‘s bloated “DaVinci Code” I was itching to walk out of the theater…but I had a great seat inside the comfortable Debussy Theater (thanks to my Rose Pastille press badge) so I decided to stay for the final two hours of the film. Bored, and surprised by just how mediocre the film is, I maintained occasional interest as the story unfolded. I’ve been told that the book is a real page-turner, but the movie adaption, which will open the Festival de Cannes tonight, is hardly engaging.

Tom Hanks seems particularly ill-suited for the lead role, while Ian McKellan adds some spice to the film whenever he is on screen and Ms. Amelie herself, Audrey Tatou, is sadly forced to mostly speak in broken English. At the film’s eventual climax, when the identity of Tatou’s character is finally revealed in a seemingly dramatic scene that today Tom Hanks called “the fulcrum of the movie,” the press audience here last night erupted with a mix of laughter and whistles.